


Game Misconduct

by InsaneTrollLogic



Series: Hockey!verse [16]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sports, Gen, Hockey, NHL AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:11:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John Sheppard is the prettiest enforcer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Game Misconduct

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the increasingly epic hockey!AU, though pretty much all stories in this series stand alone. Originally posted to LJ 3/25/14 (aw, this was my first SGA fic)

That John Sheppard is perennially in the top ten for penalty minutes is mostly an accident. It’s not even that he’s a hothead. More it’s a side effect of college hockey at the Air Force academy and a tour that ended with his friend’s guts spilling out in his hands. He’s got this thing about teammates that’s next to sacred and before he realizes what’s happening, his name starts to crop up next to the position enforcer.  
  
Of course, that doesn’t mean he bothers to change it. There’s a decent career in being an enforcer. Especially one who can actually skate. There are some guys with his job that play four minutes a game and earn five PIMs. John on the other hand is a serviceable defenseman if only for his willingness to keep the puck out of the net even if it means he goes home sporting dozens of oblong bruises. His teammates never seem to mind his spells in the box, clapping him on the back after a brawl and pulling him into the team hug when someone scores. It’s the reason he stuck with this sport as a kid, the camaraderie that is stronger than the taboos that kept the Sheppard men from accepting physical contact.   
  
Doesn’t hurt that skating feels a bit like flying.   
  
The playoff run he has with Montreal, well it’s about the most fun he’s ever had. The team’s playing above their heads, that second gear that comes only when the stars align. Mitch is seeing the puck in that eerily precognitive ways goaltenders on a hot streak develop. Every pass hit tape. Shots find the back of the net.  
  
Winnipeg is a better team than they are, but Montreal is in that glorious zone where everything is going well and get the elimination game six at home in Centre Bell.   
  
They’re a goal up with ten minutes remaining in the period and John can smell that Stanley Cup berth until there’s contact behind the play and fuck, that’s one of his Habs laid out unmoving on the ice. Everything else is instinct. He never saw the contact, the ref doesn’t have his hand raised, but that doesn’t matter. Body language says who delivered the hit.   
  
Watson, by all reports isn’t a bad guy. In fact, considering he puts up with Holmes, is probably a saint, but that doesn’t stop the anger. John hits him and doesn’t get a punch thrown in return.  
  
When the refs intervene, it’s a five-minute major for Sheppard and nothing for Watson. The Jets score twice on the power play and net the insurance goal with twenty seconds left on the clock and the net empty.   
  
Game seven in Winnipeg sees the Habs blanked and the Stanley Cup sliding out of their reach. His teammates don’t say a word to him about the penalty—they all know what kind of guy he is. Considering Wright’s whopper of a concussion, they don’t blame John for the anger.  
  
The fans and media are less than kind and John is all but chased out of Montreal with pitchforks.  
  
*  
  
Rodney McKay should not be a hockey player.  
  
He’s too small for it, too slow and spends half of every practice fussing over concussions and possible failures of the equipment designed to protect his precious brain. He yells at people more than the coach and has on more than one occasion made teammates cry. Despite all physical disadvantages, he knows the game as well as anyone on Earth and has the sort of deceptive physical strength that allows for surprisingly tough board play.   
  
When Rodney McKay was fifteen and already coasting in college, he’d made the mistake of telling his sister he could be anything he wanted. In all her infinite wisdom, she’d snorted and told him he could never make it in the NHL.   
  
And, well, McKay was stubborn, contrary, and Canadian by nature.   
  
After all, hockey is one step from applied physics.  
  
*  
  
John lands in Colorado and slouching into training camp wearing a newly acquired Avalanche t-shirt. It had taken him a while to figure out their alternate logo, but after he pieces together that it’s a foot sticking out of a snowdrift, he’s strangely all right with this trade.  
  
The first thing anyone says to him is, “Oh God we signed the pretty-boy enforcer?”  
  
He’s well aware of the genetic accident that is his hair, but he’d rather thought he’d been punched in the face a few too many times to qualify as anything other than ruggedly handsome. He flashes the guy—McKay if memory serves—a smirk and says, “Always nice to be the prettiest girl at the ball.”  
  
McKay sputters as Sheppard sits down next to an openly staring kid whose locker says Ford.  
  
“Dude,” Ford whispers.  
  
“Yes, yes,” McKay says. “Everyone’s articulate today. We’re all very impressed.”  
  
And that’s the start of John’s one-year deal with the Avalanche. He likes Ford on sight, McKay not so much.   
  
*  
  
Business as usual when they’re back on the ice. McKay’s not a dirty player per se, but he’s also managed to piss off anyone he’s talked to for more than a few minutes. So, it’s not really a surprise that they don’t even make it to the midway mark of the first period of their first game in the season when someone sees fit to ram his head into the boards when he’s not expecting it. Fortunately, he’s insisted on all the high end safety equipment and has spend more time doctoring his helmet than his sticks. Starting like this, he’s thinking this may be a long season.   
  
Until John Sheppard takes offense and calls up a dance partner.   
  
McKay’s in the process of being ushered to the locker room for the concussion test as he hears the roars from the approving home crowd. Sheppard joins him at the intermission, sporting a tiny row of neat black stitches. “You okay,” Sheppard asks in that voice that grates on his ears.  
  
“They tell me I’ve got no signs of a concussion, but I’m pretty sure a hit like that is going to rattle your brain around in your skull and…”  
  
Coach O’Neill’s going through the adjustments for the second, dismissing McKay’s chatter as white noise like he always does. Sheppard’s half amused smirk remains through the tirade and McKay finds himself temporarily derailed to ask, “Why did you go and do that?”  
  
“You’re my teammate,” Sheppard says.  
  
“You don’t even like me.”  
  
“You’re team,” Sheppard repeats, pats him once on the back and heads back to the ice for the second.  
  
*  
  
John’s assigned McKay for a roommate on the first road swing. Zelenka, who had McKay duty last year, is the one who breaks the news. “It is the hazing ritual of the bosses. Give them a month and he will be back to rooming by himself.”  
  
“Jesus,” Sheppard groans. “Why is this guy even still here?"  
  
“Because he is a defensive genius and invaluable on the penalty kill,” Zelenka replies. “Also, his contract has a no trade clause.”  
  
Rooming with McKay could be worse, John decides after the first nights. McKay’s got half a dozen bizarre rituals, brings his own hypoallergenic pillows, but lets John put on Star Trek movies and in between his bitching about scientific fallacies, does one of the most spot-on impressions of Shatner that he’s ever seen.   
  
Both Ford and Bates offer him their condolences during the team dinner but John just shrugs and says everything’s cool. McKay spends the dinner at the opposite table, locked in an argument with Peter Grodin about defensive formations during a five on three.   
  
*  
  
McKay leads the team in ice time and in terms of plus/minus is second only to Toronto’s Rory Williams. John’s willing to concede that he might look flabby, but clearly isn’t actually out of shape. He complains that O’Neill can’t trust any of the other imbeciles with the Avalanche’s defensive wellbeing. John, though usually paired with Lorne winds up on the shift with McKay with some regularity.   
  
Rodney’s always in the right place has moments of shocking creativity with the puck and knows instinctively when to push into the offensive zone. He’s the kind of person who makes everything else easier, compensating instinctively for his partner’s weaknesses and Sheppard can appreciate that kind of talent.   
  
*  
  
John’s promoted to the first defensive pair two months into the season. At first he thinks it’s a mistake. His style of play has never been particularly refined and McKay prides himself on pinpoint precision. But…  
  
McKay compensates when he goes on a kamikaze mission from the blue line to the opposite net. He’s the kind of player who thinks a two-on-one is pretty good odds and while he bitches to John after the game, there’s no real heat to it. John’s seen the look on his face when he’s stopped break before it even got to the goalie.   
  
Sheppard spends most the season soaring on a high note that in his experience mean’s he’s maybe a week away from being traded.   
  
He thinks that right up until GM Weir calls him to her office. There’s a faint smile on her face as she says, “I’m going to get right to the point. McKay has reportedly become less of an ass since you began to work with him. This is a dynamic I’m hoping to preserve.”  
  
“Huh,” John says, sitting down hard. Later, he’ll attribute the headache to a delayed reaction to a bruising hit. “Is this the part while you offer me a multi-year contract?”  
  
*  
  
The last day of the season, McKay’s holed up in their hotel room in Chicago ripping through a pile of physics papers mumbling about logical fallacies and people who fail to fact-check before publication.   
  
“You have the weirdest stress relievers.”  
  
“At least I’m not watching Slapshot for the sixteenth time. And it’s not weird. I have a doctorate in physics.”  
  
“And you’re playing in the NHL?”  
  
“I have to concuss myself into a lower IQ so the imbeciles can actually keep up with me.”   
  
John wants to think no one is that arrogant, but by now he knows McKay far too well. “It’s in the math,” he comments, glancing at the pages. “Third line.”  
  
“Very funny, Sheppard,” McKay snaps.  
  
He shrugs in response and claims the bathroom for a shower. Ten minutes in he hears McKay calling his name in his usual blend of annoyance and surprise and grins into the fogged up mirror. 

**Author's Note:**

> ...I might have to do another SGA hockey fic. Because clearly Atlantis isn't so much in the middle of the water as on fields of ice, Ronon would be the most ridiculous hockey player of all time, and Teyla's already awesome at beating people up with sticks


End file.
